


Marked Man

by kindkit



Category: King Rat - James Clavell
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Ficlet, M/M, Prisoner of War, Tattoos, Unresolved Sexual Tension, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 10:25:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/938862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindkit/pseuds/kindkit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The King doesn't worry that Changi is making him queer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marked Man

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a fill for the Kink Bingo prompt "Tattoos/Tattooing."
> 
> No standard Kink Bingo content notes apply. Contains period-appropriate language that is racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic.
> 
> Although this is bookverse, the Peter Marlowe in my head looks like James Fox, who played him in the film.

Lots of guys in Changi worry about turning queer, but the King doesn't. What he figures is, a man doesn't stop being a man when he's locked up. He still wants what men want: food and fucking. And if because he's locked up he can't have steak and mashed potatoes and apple pie and women, whatever he can have will start to look pretty good. 

The only complaint anybody has about rice these days is that there isn't enough of it.

The King eats better than anybody else, even the Japs, so he's got more of an urge to fuck, too. He gets a hard-on whenever Sean Jennison walks by, which wouldn't matter anyway because Sean might as well be a girl. (So much of a damn flighty girl, crying and needing attention, that screwing him would be more trouble than it's worth.) The King likes to look at the young guys, the ones with soft faces and soft skin, the way he'd look at pretty girls if there were girls. When the need builds up he gives that fag orderly Steven some rice or an egg and gets his dick sucked. He only keeps it secret because men respect the King more if they think he's above all that.

Peter Marlowe's a little bit of a problem, though. Because the King likes Peter. Peter's a hell of a guy, the King's right-hand man in fact, and you can't look at your right-hand man and think about how much you want to stick your dick in him. 

It's be easier if Peter would stop wearing that damn skirt--sorry, _sarong_. It clings around his hips and ass and all down his long, long legs, and somehow that's worse than if he walked around in a loincloth like half the other men do. The King always liked a tall blond dame, one with a cool head and a smart way of talking like in the movies, so Peter's just about the Changi version of his dream girl.

And there's the tattoo. Peter had it done in Singapore before the surrender. It's not like the blurry black tattoos you see on sailors, not an anchor or a girl's name. It's some kind of Oriental dragon, a vivid blood red, and it curls around his leg from the ankle almost to the knee. Pants would cover it, but Peter wears that fucking sarong and the King sees flashes of tattoo every time he takes a step. It's so damn red against his pale skin, and the King wants to touch it. He wants to feel it, knowing there won't be anything to feel except Peter's skin and the downy blond hairs that glow like goddamn gold in the right light. All that color won't feel like _anything_ , but he wants to try and try, wants to keep touching Peter's leg forever.

He wants to lick that tattoo, follow it with his tongue as it winds over bone and muscle. Taste the sweat there and see if it's different from the sweat anywhere else on Peter's body. Try to taste the colors.

He wants to rub his dick against it. It's like a dick itself, a long red curly dick, like Peter has two dicks and he's twice the man anybody else can ever be. He wants to come on it, rub his jizz all over it until it soaks in, like he could mark Peter that way and then Peter with his two dicks and his officer's armband and his English-royalty voice would have _Property of the King of Changi_ spelled out under his skin.

Sometimes the King hates Peter Marlowe. Sometimes he'd like to cut his throat and then peel that fucking tattoo off him and hang it on the wall above his bed.

Sometimes he wants to kiss Peter Marlowe. Sometimes he wants to drag him back to the States, sarong and all, and keep him like a prize, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow you can never get to.

That's the thing about Changi. It may not make you queer, exactly, but it gets to you. It gets under your skin, like a tattoo or a biting fly. It gets into your head until the damnedest crazy things almost start to make sense.


End file.
